Aug 31, 2011

A lot has been made, unfairly, of British athletes such as Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah missing out on the gold medals they were predicted to win at the World Athletics Championships - not to mention Usain Bolt's disqualification in the 100 metres - but surely the most disappointing performance of all has been that of Channel 4 broadcasting the games for the first time.

Although they appear not to be the target audience, any sports fans tuning in will have had nothing but sympathy for sporting legend Michael Johnson, a brilliant athletics pundit poached, like the broadcast rights, from the BBC. Johnson has had to witness at close quarters the uncomfortable spectacle of 'The Bloke Off The Gadget Show' and 'Doesn't He Normally Introduce Hollyoaks On T4' showing there is a lot more to presenting live sport than meets the eye.

Johnson, a man who knows first hand the pain of being the infallible member of a flawed relay team, could have been forgiven thoughts of 'here we go again' as he witnessed his co-presenters contrive the broadcasting equivalent of fumbling the relay baton... before kicking it into the water jump and spearing it with a javelin for good measure.

Many viewers and 'proper' sports presenters were quick to question, then criticise Channel 4 - to the point there has now been an urgent reshuffling of presenters. Channel 4 clearly had the best intentions of opening up athletics to a younger audience, albeit at the risk of insulting existing fans. However, even the least discerning teens can't have enjoyed watching some of the in-studio awkwardness (watch the below clips all the way through and then watch it again focussing only on Johnson's 'dropped-baton' look of quiet resignation every time The Gadget Show's Ortis Deley fumbles his handovers:

Aug 27, 2011

Ever since former England footballer Paul Gascoigne reportedly turned up during the manhunt for murderer Raoul Moat with some chicken, beers, a dressing gown and a fishing rod, it has become perhaps the most predictable joke on Twitter.

Any situation of adversity or controversy is followed, as surely as night follows day by suggestions on Twitter that Gazza is due at the scene - normally with at least the chicken and the fishing rod.

From situations such as the sexism row at Sky Sports ("Gazza is on his way to Andy Gray's house with some chicken and a fishing rod") to the liberation of Tripoli and the toppling of Gaddafi's Libyan regime ("Gazza is on his way to Tripoli with some chicken and a fishing rod") it has become an ever-present on the social network.

The phonehacking scandal which has beseiged Rupert Murdoch's media empire is poised at its most precipitous point. Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire has surrendered the names of the News International staff who ordered the phonehacking to take place in a letter to law firm Schillings who are representing comedian Steve Coogan.

[Mulcaire's] solicitor, Sarah Webb, from Payne Hicks Beach, said she could not reveal who the NoW employees were because of "confidentiality issues". Schillings, which is representing Coogan, has agreed not to reveal the names yet, to give Payne Hicks Beach a chance to apply for a court order stopping their release.

So the only thing now protecting the identities of those News International employees who illegaly invaded the lives of innocent people, is the respect others have for confidentiality and the law.

Aug 26, 2011

"A third of UK women leave the shower running while shaving their legs, wasting around 50bn litres of water a year – enough to supply London for 25 days, according to research published today."

So far the story's been picked up by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, suggesting the PR team at Thames Water may have picked the right angle to lead with (despite the same release claiming that a far more significant 120 billion more litres of water are apparently wasted by people leaving the tap running while brushing their teeth).

It probably helped of course that the Daily Mail is incapable of passing up an opportunity to use a picture of a model in the shower.

However, as PR exercises go, it seems to be backfiring, not just because of its clumsy singling out of women but also because such finger-pointing rather invites a comparison with the amount of water Thames Water itself wastes through leakage across its network. Here is that comparison:

Aug 24, 2011

"We can give categorical assurances that [Andy Coulson] wasn't paid by any other source. Andy Coulson's only salary, his only form of income, came from the party during the years he worked for the party and in government."

Statement from the Conservative Party, 23rd August 2011:

"We were not aware until last night of allegations that Andy Coulson's severance package, agreed with News International ...was paid in instalments that continued into the time he was employed by the Conservative party. It is not part of the HR process to discuss severance payments from previous jobs with potential employees."

Whether it's true or not, it does make you wonder how they could give such "categorical assurances" back in July.

Aug 23, 2011

The BBC's Robert Peston has claimed that Andy Coulson, former editor of the News Of The World and David Cameron's ex-spin doctor remained in the pay of News International while he was working for the Tory party:

Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World who has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in phone hacking and bribing the police, received several hundred thousand pounds from News International after starting work as the Conservative Party's Director of Communications in July 2007.

Peston makes clear the alleged payments "were part of [Coulson's] severance package" but whatever his contractual entitlement to the money, there will be plenty who point to an obvious conflict of interests if one of David Cameron's key advisors did accept undisclosed payments from the nation's most powerful media company - former employer or not. There may also be questions for the Conservatives to answer, given they have claimed previously that they were satisfied Coulson had severed his ties with News International prior to starting work with the party.

Aug 22, 2011

Aug 21, 2011

A recent article published by the Huffington Post featured interviews with a group of Westminster tweeters, some of whom claim to be plugged in to the inner sanctum of the Tory party.

The anonymous tweeters remained under the cover of their pseudonym and it fell upon the reader to trust they were who the journalists said they were. Sadly, it seems the Huffington Post skimped on the necessary fact checking to reward such trust.

Among those interviewed by the Huffington Post was a character calling himself @Lord_Credo on Twitter who it has been claimed is a troubled fantasist who duped just enough people to gather some momentum and second-hand validation among online politics watchers.

Huffington Post

Whatever the truth, the Huffington Post certainly has not responded to these suggestions that @Lord_Credo is a fraud with a strong defence of its fact checking. As a result its piece now makes for fairly painful reading, given a number of questions are based on apparent statements of fact such as "You were involved in government at a high level until fairly recently..." But the quote from @Lord_Credo which may haunt the journalists responsible the longest is this:

"I think the media are doing their job as best they can with the limited amount of information they can use about what happens behind the scenes..."

It's quite clear now these journalists could easily have done a much better job with the limited amount of information they had about @Lord_Credo.

Aug 19, 2011

The Daily Mail has done a good job over the years of breaking pretty much everything down into two very useful lists: things that give you cancer and things that cure cancer. Just this week we've been told 'space weather' can increase the risk of cancer in frequent flyers travelling to the US. But it's easy to lose track of which things belong on which list. So in order to help, The Media Blog has compiled the following cut-out-and-keep A to Z of things the Mail says could cause cancer - some may be obvious, some slightly less so [click to enlarge]:

Why not speak to your HR department, or health and safety officer about putting this up on the office wall - or maybe in the kitchen as a reminder to people about the risks of eating toast... or even working for that matter.

Before last night's Celebrity Big Brother had even finished airing on Channel 5 today's Daily Star had gone to the printers with a claim that the launch was "record" breaking (it is of course no coincidence that the Daily Star is also owned by Channel 5 proprietor Richard Desmond):

But exactly which "record" was broken? According to overnight viewing figures Celebrity Big Brother's debut on Channel 5 drew an impressive 5.1m viewers. That puts it fourth on Channel 5's all time list of most-watched broadcasts. Impressive, but it isn't a record.

At 5.1 million it is also considerably lower than the 7.2 million viewers who tuned in for the launch of Celebrity Big Brother in 2002. So it wasn't the Celebrity Big Brother record either.

In fact, Channel 5's launch was only the seventh most-watched launch episode of Celebrity Big Brother:

Aug 17, 2011

Badminton School has once again offered up its more 'media friendly' girls to newspapers looking for photos of happy female A Level students.

The Media Blog happened upon an email from the £9,000-per-term public school this week which promises the girls on offer "speak extremely well and take a good picture". We can assume this latter point is not a comment upon their camera skills.

An extract of that email reads:

"Please find enclosed a draft release regarding A Levels. We obviously won't have the figures until Thursday but you are very warmly invited to come to Badminton... to interview, take shots and film as we have lots of girls coming in that day including the three below who would make very good case studies - they speak extremely well and take a good picture..."

There then followed some pen portraits of three teenage girls, one of which began:

"I have a fabulous case study of a girl... who sadly lost her mother to breast cancer..."

It's worth remembering the purpose of such publicity stunts is not really to champion these students, whatever their personal tales of bravery and high-achievement, it is ultimately to attract more fee-paying parents to the school by showcasing its academic results in a way which will court the most media attention. Also attached to the email were some photos showing what the girls might look like celebrating their A Level results, inlcuding the obligatory, 'girls jumping in the air' shot:

Lads mag Nuts has apparently taken a long hard look at itself ahead of a relaunch on Friday. And after careful consideration and much deliberation it has hit upon a formula of naked girls, naked girls and more naked girls (with some jokes about naked girls and a few reviews of 'boys toys', such as cars and gadgets thrown in for good measure).

The Guardian reports that publisher IPC undertook "extensive market research to see if young men's tastes have changed" before deciding to "stick to its tried and trusted formula".

Editor Dominic Smith told the Guardian:

"We found that men have so much more pressure on them these days and it is more important than ever for Nuts to be their escape, to be funny and allow them to get away from their woes for an hour."

Smith may be a man who knows a thing or two about pressure. Last year, sales of Nuts fell 20 per cent and its circulation halved over the past five years. With IPC reportedly putting £500,000 behind the relaunch, those downward trends need to be halted soon and Smith will be hoping his belief that naked girls are the solution to life's problems is one shared by thousands of new and lapsed readers.

Aug 11, 2011

The Daily Star has laid claim to an "exclusive" tomorrow morning despite some pretty tell-tale signs that all it did was report on court proceedings which other media were also party to. Unsurprising then that The Sun, Evening Standard and Daily Mail had the story up already:

To further add to this confusion, it appears the Mirror has exactly the same story on its front page but appears not to have realised it was an exclusive:

Bailey is either so engrossed in the Metro that he can't walk straight or he's trying to avoid the cameras, either way, with the newspaper obscuring his view he walked straight into a lamp post... live on BBC News, making himself an instant laughing stock with users of social media sites keen to share his humiliation.

An apparent internal competition to out-stupid one another in apportioning blame for London's riots has today seen the Daily Mail point the finger at those people who highlighted the News Of The World phone hacking scandal and the corruption it revealed within the Met Police:

"While London was ablaze and looters raged through the streets... Sir Paul Stephenson – the police officer best equipped to deal with this carnage – was sitting at home... Caught in the grip of the political class's lust for media blood, former Commissioner Sir Paul ...was driven from office over a link to the phone-hacking scandal...He had employed an ex-News of the World executive – which, in sane times, would have earned him nothing more than a modest carpeting... He also accepted free hospitality at a luxury health spa that also employed the said executive, Neil Wallis..."

Aug 07, 2011

You can almost picture Observer columnist Nick Cohen switching on BBC News 24 last night, long after today's paper had gone to print, or picking up the morning papers today - with wall-to-wall coverage of the riots and thinking: "ah... today's column could have been better timed".